Hobodeluxe:hervatski: You can't force a person to do something but you can't also allow them to NOT give something they are due. Does that make sense?

If the affordable Care act says "you give people contraceptives and they have to take it" that means Youre forcing the company to actively force itself on someone, which isn't right.

But the law says the company cannot deny care that the person requires. I think that's where its gonna come down to.

here's my argument.

that money is not the corporation's money. it's the employee's money. it's their deferred compensation. the company you work for should not be allowed to tell you what you can or cannot buy with your own money.

Well the company is already dictating that that portion of the employee's compensation be spent on medical care. Obviously they can dictate to employees how their money is spent.

Headso:Mr. Right: Employers should be prohibited from offering health insurance to their employees; individuals should be encouraged (if not mandated) to set up HSAs when they are young and maintain them and that should be the norm for health insurance. At that point, you can take your risk pools and place them where a colonoscopy would be required to find them.

Citizens should just have a certain level of coverage no HSA required then if you want additional or better coverage you can purchase it. What you advocate puts more of the burden on the middle class and poor.

More importantly, what happens when health expenses exceed savings for unlucky individuals?

A thousand 20 year olds start an HSA, putting $3,000 into their accounts. The lucky bank administering those HSAs has $3 million in new capital.At the end of the year, one of those people gets in a car accident. Another discovers she has aggressive breast cancer. A third comes down with MRSA.

What happens to those three people with only access to $3000 in their HSAs who are facing five or six figure medical bills? In a normal risk pool situation, there would be $3 million (less admin) available for coverage.

Shryke:Pitabred: If I get cancer, there's no way I could pay for how much I'd use in the system.

False.

Sure. Just because you say so? You're asserting I'm in the position to be contributing millions of dollars to the hospital/drug company/etc. to pay for my cancer treatments to make up for my use of the system?

Additionally, it is indicative of the shiat logic most of the left attach to "health insurance" in the first place.

By definition, health insurance premiums exceed the amount consumed. Or the company closes. Health insurance isn't magic; the opposite is true: it is very good math. The only "magic" in this discussion is the preposterous idea that insuring already sick/disabled/dying people can somehow work out to "affordable", via redistribution.

So... let them die? fark the poor, sick and disabled, they had it coming to them? Damn. Nice to know you're a sociopath, and so labeled.

Headso:You should google the hippocratic oath and learn that even before Obamacare people still would get care even without coverage. You should also google "health care spending growth at it's lowest" and then come back and amend your concern trolling about costs.

The hippocratic oath is not a contract to slavery (although you want it to be). But wtf this has to do with insurance, I have no idea.

Second, the expansion of cost inflation, or deceleration of same, is meaningless, when it means the product delivered is far worse. That's what is happening here. Millions of people are losing their current policies in hopes of gaining new, nearly "free" ones, and thus consumption has declined. This is much like cash-for-clunkers: you are simply playing accounting games.

Dancin_In_Anson:Headso: yep my bad, you think the owners of hobby lobby are buying their employees insurance with their own personal money not that the hobby lobby has emotions.

They own the business, they have the say just as you do in your business.

Why don't they just pay everyone directly out of their own pockets and assume all the liability of running this large company directly instead of limiting their liability with an incorporation? They get the benefits of being a company they should have to deal with the consequences too.

Debeo Summa Credo:Exactly. If the exchanges are so great, let people buy their own insurance. With community rating it wouldn't be much, if any, more expensive than group plans. And the consumer would in many cases get more choice than under group cafeteria plans.

This is a point where you and I (about as strong an ACA advocate as you'll find, even if I'd rather we went ahead and got first-world health care) agree. The exchanges would, one should hope anyway, have better competition than they do now if virtually everyone was buying from them.

I'm in the camp of people that think that if an employer has a religion, they have the right to STFU and not allow it to effect the lives of the employees.If they violate the right to STFU, they have the right to be imprisoned for forcing their beliefs/bullshiat on their employees.

If Hobby Lobby wins this, I'm hoping that this is the death knell of having health benefits tied to your employer. The amount of coverage should be between you and your insurer and no one else. Hobby Lobby and other places can just not offer insurance and simply make up the difference in a higher wage.

/Yeah, right.//They'll give instructions on how to apply for Medicaid///Fark them and the horse they rode in on

Cubicle Jockey:.Headso: Mr. Right: Employers should be prohibited from offering health insurance to their employees; individuals should be encouraged (if not mandated) to set up HSAs when they are young and maintain them and that should be the norm for health insurance. At that point, you can take your risk pools and place them where a colonoscopy would be required to find them.

Citizens should just have a certain level of coverage no HSA required then if you want additional or better coverage you can purchase it. What you advocate puts more of the burden on the middle class and poor.

More importantly, what happens when health expenses exceed savings for unlucky individuals?

A thousand 20 year olds start an HSA, putting $3,000 into their accounts. The lucky bank administering those HSAs has $3 million in new capital.At the end of the year, one of those people gets in a car accident. Another discovers she has aggressive breast cancer. A third comes down with MRSA.

What happens to those three people with only access to $3000 in their HSAs who are facing five or six figure medical bills? In a normal risk pool situation, there would be $3 million (less admin) available for coverage.

What happens when people dont have to join until they get Breast Cancer or MRSA ?

DamnYankees:Debeo Summa Credo: So, do the exchanges not work? What's wrong with having people buy their own insurance?

Nothing. I have no objection to letting everyone buy on exchanges if they want to. I'm not sure what the argument against it is, honestly - there might be a good one.

The argument is that there shouldn't be an employer mandate. We have this farked up hybrid system now. Let employees buy their own insurance, which with community rating has decreased prices for risky individuals.

Much better than forcing employers to add a benefit and administer a plan and mandate what is provided in the benefit.

Pitabred:Sure. Just because you say so? You're asserting I'm in the position to be contributing millions of dollars to the hospital/drug company/etc. to pay for my cancer treatments to make up for my use of the system?

All cancer treatments cost millions of dollars? shiat, if you are going to belt out the bullshiat, why not go for billions of dollars? Or trillions? Gorillions!

So... let them die? fark the poor, sick and disabled, they had it coming to them? Damn. Nice to know you're a sociopath, and so labeled.

This is very tired, and childish, argument. Everyone in the world dies, Bleedingheartbred. Let's turn this argument around, as you seem so very concerned: should the government pay for a dual lung transplant for my grandmother, who is 97, and then indenture you for the cost of it? Do you feel that is just, and a wise policy? I expect huge amounts of leftist compassion in your reply, don't disappoint me.

DamnYankees:BravadoGT: No--I'm saying SCOTUS isn't bogging themselves down with the business structure of the employer.They are only deciding whether a for-profit employer (any for-profit employer) can object to Obamacare under the RFRA and the 1st amendment.

And yet you conveniently are not addressing the fact that in a corporation the "employer" is not a person. The "employer" is the corporation, which is a legal fiction. How can a non-individual, which is definitionally incapable of having religious beliefs, base any claim on the RFRA?

theorellior:If Hobby Lobby wins this, I'm hoping that this is the death knell of having health benefits tied to your employer. The amount of coverage should be between you and your insurer and no one else. Hobby Lobby and other places can just not offer insurance and simply make up the difference in a higher wage.

/Yeah, right.//They'll give instructions on how to apply for Medicaid///Fark them and the horse they rode in on

You know this isnt acceptable. The argument will be that the evil companies will just take the money and put it in the bathtub and swim in it like Scrooge McDuck.

We need to take the money from the companies. Then the government can allocate that money how it SHOULD be spent.

TheWhoppah:Corporations do not have a right to exist. There are conditions that must be met before a corporation may be formed and there are conditions that must be met to maintain the corporate charter. A corporation that does not operate in the public interest may be dissolved. Just make compliance with Obamacare a condition for incorporation and this question is answered.

That's tough sledding, given a right to assembly and speech. In the simplest analysis, corporations are just a group of people -- with all of the rights possessed.

Cubicle Jockey:Ned Stark: Well the company is already dictating that that portion of the employee's compensation be spent on medical care. Obviously they can dictate to employees how their money is spent.

Can the company dictate what brand of car the employer buys, as commuting costs are inherently included as part of salary/wage compensation?

The company makes me take four weeks of vacation a year, can they dictate to me where I go?

BravadoGT:DamnYankees: BravadoGT: No--I'm saying SCOTUS isn't bogging themselves down with the business structure of the employer.They are only deciding whether a for-profit employer (any for-profit employer) can object to Obamacare under the RFRA and the 1st amendment.

And yet you conveniently are not addressing the fact that in a corporation the "employer" is not a person. The "employer" is the corporation, which is a legal fiction. How can a non-individual, which is definitionally incapable of having religious beliefs, base any claim on the RFRA?

Hobodeluxe:hervatski: You can't force a person to do something but you can't also allow them to NOT give something they are due. Does that make sense?

If the affordable Care act says "you give people contraceptives and they have to take it" that means Youre forcing the company to actively force itself on someone, which isn't right.

But the law says the company cannot deny care that the person requires. I think that's where its gonna come down to.

here's my argument.

that money is not the corporation's money. it's the employee's money. it's their deferred compensation. the company you work for should not be allowed to tell you what you can or cannot buy with your own money.

That's what I think about this situation. Wouldn't this set a precedent for allowing employers to dictate how employees spend their wages?

BravadoGT:DamnYankees: BravadoGT: No--I'm saying SCOTUS isn't bogging themselves down with the business structure of the employer.They are only deciding whether a for-profit employer (any for-profit employer) can object to Obamacare under the RFRA and the 1st amendment.

And yet you conveniently are not addressing the fact that in a corporation the "employer" is not a person. The "employer" is the corporation, which is a legal fiction. How can a non-individual, which is definitionally incapable of having religious beliefs, base any claim on the RFRA?

Seriously. I bought your food when I could - hell, my friend used to farm literally around the corner from your building. I like supporting Michiganders and farmers. I like supporting the little guy going up against the Big Food Conglomertates who are deciding what constitutes 'organic' and making it harder and harder for honest smaller companies to use the label. I still point people toward this article

I really don't want to anymore. Buy your products, I mean. You can have your personal beliefs, that's fine. But no, you don't get to force them on your employees - at the expense of their health - anymore.

Oh, and this?

Potter, a Roman Catholic, claimed that he opposes "contraception, abortion and abortifacients" because they "almost always involve immoral and unnatural practices."

This Michigander, born and raised Roman Catholic, who is on birth control for non contraceptive reasons, would beg to differ. And would also like to question if having a child born from a rape, or being forced to carry a child to term your doctor has informed you will be dead upon delivery because you couldn't afford an abortion - and childbirth does not have a 0% fatality rate - is immoral or not.

But you can have those beliefs, if you'd like. But I'm not giving you any more profits to spend. Sincerely,

Nutsac_Jim:You know this isnt acceptable. The argument will be that the evil companies will just take the money and put it in the bathtub and swim in it like Scrooge McDuck.

We need to take the money from the companies. Then the government can allocate that money how it SHOULD be spent.

If a company that provides a health benefit as part of its compensation package decides to no longer carry that package, and it refuses to adjust monetary compensation accordingly, should very well be forced to pay their employees the full amount they've been contractually entitled to. How about them apples?

MyRandomName:eurotrader: If taken to the asinine conclusion of the argument by Hobby lobby and their ilk, any person working for them must agree to all of their beliefs and since they belief providing payment as part of employee compensation for insurance means the employee has no right to private medical decisions; do for profit business have the right to install monitoring equipment in employee's home and person to insure they do not engage in any behavior the company finds distasteful? Can the companies track any monies paid to employees to insure they do not spend money on things like alcohol and condoms if the companies religion forbid them.

When did Hobby Lobby start do ing bedroom checks on their employees? They just don't want to pay for it. They aren't banning contraceptions for their employees.

Your logical conclusion is idiotic.

Grasping simple concept may be a problem for you. No company is being force to buy contraceptives for their employees. A company operating in the US has to obey a large number of laws, a company can object all they want to the minimum wage but it does not change it because they have a religion that says owing slaves is acceptable. If a company does not want to offer health insurance to employees as part of their compensation they are free to move to whatever backwards country they want, if they do comply with the laws of the US about offering health insurance to employees their involvement with it is strictly monetary and invasion of privacy should be limited by that factor. If they use money as the guide, contraception is far cheaper than paying for one pregnancy to term and delivery. Allowing for profit companies to make decision about activities outside of work hours that have no effect on said job is inching towards allowing companies to just purchase employees lives. Supporting the asinine position of hobby lobby is tantamount to supporting indenture servitude for all people that wish to eat and sleep indoors because they are always free to leave the serfdom. Not everyone has the ability to strike out on their own and become a galt.

OgreMagi:What if your employer is a Christian Scientist, which doesn't allow a whole lot of pretty basic medical stuff. Or how about $cientologists who wouldn't allow psychiatric treatment or therapy other than their e-meter scam?

If they rule in favor of the religious whack jobs, it will completely destroy our right to make our own choices. It will put those choices in the hands of farking morons (or cheap bastards looking for an easy way out of offering coverage).

That's the thing about people with hardcore ideologies. They never think "what if this principle I'm fighting for went both ways?" In many cases they're not CAPABLE of thinking that way.

Dancin_In_Anson:Headso: yep my bad, you think the owners of hobby lobby are buying their employees insurance with their own personal money not that the hobby lobby has emotions.

They own the business, they have the say just as you do in your business.

Serious Post on Serious Thread: Paying a living wage and not working someone to death

If you don't like your pay and you don't like your hours, you are not forced by anyone to work there. Nor should you be forced to work there. Or do anything against your will for that matter.

Hobodeluxe: well what exactly is their standing for filing this suit?how does it harm them other than their feelings?why does it matter to them if their employees' insurance covers contraceptives?

Why does it matter to you?

Hobodeluxe: it's not them purchasing them. the employees are.that money they give the insurance company is actually their employee's deferred compensation.The employees are actually purchasing the plan.All the company is doing is getting them a discount.

So how about this? They have no company insurance and they choose to buy their own insurance that will cover whatever their little hearts desire. Better yet they can make the choice to go to work elsewhere that offers them something more attractive. You're hiring aren't you? $20/hour plus full benes too I'm sure.

"If you don't like your pay and you don't like your hours, you are not forced by anyone to work there. Nor should you be forced to work there. Or do anything against your will for that matter."

My will is to bash yor moms head in with a rock. So that's ok? Right?Do you even farking understand what a state if nature is? Are you that simple?

Jesus H. Christmas on a pogo stick. What candy land fantasy world do you live in? I should be able to spit nickles out of my belly button and have a new pony every day. Because because. But listen up farktard. Life ain't all shiats & giggles idealism, cold hard reality sets in after you move out of mom's basement. And if I'm gonna pay good money to be part of civilization you can fark right off if you think your dopey perfect rainbow fantasy world is gonna make me and mine eat shiat for your farktarded delusion.

trekkiecougar:Hobodeluxe: hervatski: You can't force a person to do something but you can't also allow them to NOT give something they are due. Does that make sense?

If the affordable Care act says "you give people contraceptives and they have to take it" that means Youre forcing the company to actively force itself on someone, which isn't right.

But the law says the company cannot deny care that the person requires. I think that's where its gonna come down to.

here's my argument.

that money is not the corporation's money. it's the employee's money. it's their deferred compensation. the company you work for should not be allowed to tell you what you can or cannot buy with your own money.

That's what I think about this situation. Wouldn't this set a precedent for allowing employers to dictate how employees spend their wages?

/Lawyers, please help.........

The employer is paying for something (health insurance) and handing it to the employee as part of their compensation. The problem is that the government is trying to dictate what the health insurance coverage covers. They shouldn't even be mandating that the company supplies any coverage.

If you don't like the compensation that the employer is offering in exchange for your time whether it be the salary, the days off, the insurance plan, or the size of the hot cocoa sampler you get for Christmas go find some other job that is more to your liking.

Cyberluddite:More significantly, the Supremes will essentially be deciding whether a corporation can have a religion and whether it has the right to free exercise of that religion. Since they've already decided that corporations are "persons" with other First Amendment rights ("freedom of speech," i.e., freedom to spend unlimited money to influence elections), it doesn't seem much of a stretch to extend to corporations the First Amendment right to free exercise of religion, does it?

Which raises the interesting possibility of one company converting another! Yes, Hobby Lobby you WERE Christian but as of 2017, you're now HINDU!

Cubicle Jockey:Ned Stark: Well the company is already dictating that that portion of the employee's compensation be spent on medical care. Obviously they can dictate to employees how their money is spent.

Can the company dictate what brand of car the employer buys, as commuting costs are inherently included as part of salary/wage compensation?

The company makes me take four weeks of vacation a year, can they dictate to me where I go?

If the company is actually buying you a car, they should absolutely be able to decide what kind f car they buy you. That's how company cars work.

If a company provided, as part of their compensation, an all expenses paid vacation, yes they should be able to decide where the appropriate destinations for the paid for vacation would be.

If you use your salary to buy a car/vacation, the employer should not have a say. Likewise, if you use your wages to buy birth control or insurance that covers birth control, the employer should not have a say.

Cubicle Jockey:Ned Stark: Well the company is already dictating that that portion of the employee's compensation be spent on medical care. Obviously they can dictate to employees how their money is spent.

Can the company dictate what brand of car the employer buys, as commuting costs are inherently included as part of salary/wage compensation?

The company makes me take four weeks of vacation a year, can they dictate to me where I go?

If they pay out a seperate gas compensation apart from your wage they may be able to enforce, say, mileage or safety standards and deny you your company gas card if you don't meet. It would merit court attention for sure.(and with this court I'd bet on the corporation winning)

theorellior:Nutsac_Jim: You know this isnt acceptable. The argument will be that the evil companies will just take the money and put it in the bathtub and swim in it like Scrooge McDuck.

We need to take the money from the companies. Then the government can allocate that money how it SHOULD be spent.

If a company that provides a health benefit as part of its compensation package decides to no longer carry that package, and it refuses to adjust monetary compensation accordingly, should very well be forced to pay their employees the full amount they've been contractually entitled to. How about them apples?

If there is a real contract heck yes

But mostly the company can decide to modify your compensation at will (maybe with a little lead time)

Cubicle Jockey:.Headso: Mr. Right: Employers should be prohibited from offering health insurance to their employees; individuals should be encouraged (if not mandated) to set up HSAs when they are young and maintain them and that should be the norm for health insurance. At that point, you can take your risk pools and place them where a colonoscopy would be required to find them.

Citizens should just have a certain level of coverage no HSA required then if you want additional or better coverage you can purchase it. What you advocate puts more of the burden on the middle class and poor.

More importantly, what happens when health expenses exceed savings for unlucky individuals?

A thousand 20 year olds start an HSA, putting $3,000 into their accounts. The lucky bank administering those HSAs has $3 million in new capital.At the end of the year, one of those people gets in a car accident. Another discovers she has aggressive breast cancer. A third comes down with MRSA.

What happens to those three people with only access to $3000 in their HSAs who are facing five or six figure medical bills? In a normal risk pool situation, there would be $3 million (less admin) available for coverage.

With all the derpers in here I figured you would have gotten a reply to this but apparently the ones here only know enough to repeat talking points and can't even go off script to advocate for their ideals. The HSAs are supposed to be coupled with catastrophic insurance so theoretically you'd have your savings account for all the small shiat and your catastrophic insurance for the big stuff. In theory it doesn't sound that bad but it's just yet another thing where the poor and middle class are the ones carrying the burden taking money out of their pockets and out of the economy that requires consumer spending.

DamnYankees:Debeo Summa Credo: So, do the exchanges not work? What's wrong with having people buy their own insurance?

Nothing. I have no objection to letting everyone buy on exchanges if they want to. I'm not sure what the argument against it is, honestly - there might be a good one.

The only argument I've seen is just that we don't need the government to run them, which sounds reasonable to me. As to Credo's question, do the exchanges not work? Well, apparently they don't. I find it strange that Republicans want to move away from employer provided health care and Dems don't. Employer health care is something that makes it difficult to leave a job for a better job, especially if you have any sort of existing condition.

DamnYankees:BravadoGT: DamnYankees: BravadoGT: No--I'm saying SCOTUS isn't bogging themselves down with the business structure of the employer.They are only deciding whether a for-profit employer (any for-profit employer) can object to Obamacare under the RFRA and the 1st amendment.

And yet you conveniently are not addressing the fact that in a corporation the "employer" is not a person. The "employer" is the corporation, which is a legal fiction. How can a non-individual, which is definitionally incapable of having religious beliefs, base any claim on the RFRA?

BravadoGT:There's no reason to deny them standing on the basis of the father incorporating the business and sharing ownership with his children.

There is, because the whole purpose of incorporation is to form a separate legal person to provide isolation from the the individual(s) that own the business. You can either have that isolation or not; you don't get to pick and choose when it applies and when it does not. If he wants to operate the business as a sole proprietorship, with the limitations and liabilities that imposes, he's welcome to do that. But he can't take limited liability and shared ownership and the like from the incorporation statues and then pretend the corporation is merely his alter ego.

Debeo Summa Credo:If the company is actually buying you a car, they should absolutely be able to decide what kind f car they buy you. That's how company cars work.

If a company provided, as part of their compensation, an all expenses paid vacation, yes they should be able to decide where the appropriate destinations for the paid for vacation would be.

I think the word "should" is doing a lot of work in these sentences. Do you mean "should" in the general sense that public policy should not interfere between competing options (like vacations to France of Germany)? Or "should" in the sense that the choice should generally be available, but the government still has the right to place regulations (i.e. you can't mandate vacations in the middle of war zones). I dont see anything constitutionallywrong with the government saying you can't limit your vacation to going to war-torn hellholes, or saying that the Company car has to meet some emissions standards or nothing.